O N E N E R G Y A N D

N A T I O N A L G O A L S

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–––––––––––––––––––––––– Jimmy Carter –––––––––––––––––––––––

Good evening.

This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I

accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I

promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your

pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom

from you.…

Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important

subject—energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the

problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress.

But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I

now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get

together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It’s clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper—deeper than

gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And

I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to

reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society—

business and labor, teachers and preachers, Governors, mayors, and private

citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and

women like you. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with

you what I’ve heard.

First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical

comments that I wrote down.

This from a southern Governor: “Mr. President, you are not leading this

Nation—you’re just managing the Government.”

“You don’t see the people enough any more.”

“Some of your Cabinet members don’t seem loyal. There is not enough

discipline among your disciples.”

“Don’t talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about

an understanding of our common good.”

“Mr. President, we’re in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and

tears.”

“If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow.”

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our Nation.

This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: “I feel so far from government. I

feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power.”

And this from a young Chicano: “Some of us have suffered from recession all

our lives.”

“Some people have wasted energy, but others haven’t had anything to

waste.”

And this from a religious leader: “No material shortage can touch the

important things like God’s love for us or our love for one another.”

And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the

mayor of a small Mississippi town: “The big-shots are not the only ones who

are important. Remember, you can’t sell anything on Wall Street unless

someone digs it up somewhere else first.”

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: “Mr. President, we are

confronted with a moral and spiritual crisis.”…

These 10 days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the

wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding

concerns about our Nation’s underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation

can be very important. That’s why I’ve worked hard to put my campaign

promises into law—and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after

listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the

legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. So, I want to

speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or

inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to

American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not

refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight

everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is

a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We

can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and

in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social

and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some

romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of

July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development

as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else—public

institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution

of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link

between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress.

We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our

own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the

ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our

democracy.…

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit

communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship selfindulgence

and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one

does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and

consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that

piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no

confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the

first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the

next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do

not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and

the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all

other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches

and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of

happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually

over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the

murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We

were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always

just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a

place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of

absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and

our savings. We believed that our Nation’s resources were limitless until 1973,

when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed…

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity.

We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived

threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now.

Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new

society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved

out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves are the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the

Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human

rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the

energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of

America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One

is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and

self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp

for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant

conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain

route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises

of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the

restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation

and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve

our energy problem.…

On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and

we can seize control again of our common destiny…

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to

our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.…

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend

until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science.

But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources—America’s people,

America’s values, and America’s confidence.…

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let

your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about

our country. With God’s help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to

join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the

American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.